Blog - Mythbusting the Xbox 360 120GB hard drive migration

After months of constantly pruning my Xbox 360 downloads to fit on a 20GB drive, I finally broke down and picked up the 120GB hard drive upgrade. I was a little wary of it due to reports that a few locked saves, such as Dead or Alive 4, wouldn't migrate properly. I also wondered if the demo-ware, videos and other marketing junk preloaded on the drive would be wiped - as the official warnings from Microsoft implied they would - or simply be merged with the contents of my 20MB drive.

It's funny, since I once recommended just such a solution to Microsoft for transferring original Xbox saves to the 360 (something I'm still trying to work through with the XSATA, a less than optimal workaround). The idea was that as long as you weren't permitted to maintain two copies of your game saves and purchased content add-ons (even those that had been locked to the drive), moving them to a newer (and thus much less likely to fail) hard drive should be no problem, right?

Well, alas, Microsoft still seems to be wearing its suspenders and belt here. First, you can only dump the contents of your 20GB drive to a 120GB; there's no option to move files between two 120GB drives. So in 3-5 years, when your chances of a drive failure have risen dramatically, you may find yourself in the same situation as with the original Xbox - bye bye, game saves (at least those you can't back up via memory card). And naturally this process still doesn't support salvaging content from an original Xbox. But enough ranting and raving, let's take a look at the process and bust a few myths.

First off, I read through the manual. (I'm weird that way.) The guide warns that any content on the 120GB drive will be wiped, so do not use it before performing a transfer. I did peek at the contents and found 13 Xbox Live Arcade trial games, 5 retail title demos, 10 videos (mostly ads and Halo 3 promos), 9 themes and 46 gamer pictures. I wanted to try to save some of the gamer pictures that I didn't already have - in case they were wiped in the process - but they could not be copied from the drive.

The manual also warned that the transfer could fail and, if so, it might just wipe out everything on my drive. Oh well, I had backed it up recently via XSATA, and it isn't the windy season (when power outages are high risk). So I took the plunge, attaching the supplied cable onto the 120GB drive, plugging the other end into the rear USB port of my 360 and dropping in the supplied transfer disk.

The transfer software estimated 90 minutes to move the contents of my 99% full hard drive. During that time I refused to run any major appliances on the same circuit, since they have been known to overload it now and again. I set the kitchen timer, watched some TV and - an hour and a half later - checked to find that it had completed with no errors. Sweet! I pulled off the now empty 20GB drive (anyone want to buy it?!) and swapped it for the newly loaded 120GB drive. Here's what I found:

• The process did not wipe off the demos, gamer pictures and other preloaded crap. In a few cases, I had duplicate videos - so I cleared off the extra copies after confirming that they were identical. It makes sense that Microsoft really wouldn't want to wipe this stuff, since probably a good 50% or more of 120GB drive buyers will be upgraders and they don't want to pass up the chance to market to them in this way!
• I loaded a few of my licensed Arcade games and as well as retail games most likely to fail (based on Internet rumors) or important to me personally. My saves for DOA4, DOAX2, Oblivion, Forza Motorsport 2, Crackdown and every other game I've tried so far are intact and exactly as I left them. My Oblivion add-on content such as The Wizard's Tower (originally installed for free from an OXM disc) loaded without incident, and my Hexic HD saved game from about a year ago was right where I left it.
• Profiles, download history, gamer pictures and theme choices were all intact, too. And since I did not move to a new console (e.g., an Elite - an option I had been entertaining), the content licenses still work offline as well.
• Best of all, I still had 90GB free, which I promptly started filling with more demos and videos - including the nearly 2GB free HD Jericho pilot. As I queued up all of the files I wanted and suddenly had the space for, I really felt the 6-item download limit. The PS3 does have a slight edge here, though I don't know anyone who would choose a system solely on its support for unlimited simultaneous background downloads.

All in all, I couldn't have asked for a better experience here - except perhaps an ongoing method to preserve my precious content beyond the expected lifespan of the magnetic media it's stored on.

For some reason, no one seems to be looking at the big picture here and - since drive failures are such an isolated and personal experience - I suspect it will be another console generation before it becomes important enough to customers that the manufacturers are forced to address it head on.

I'm not sure how practical it will be to perform a backup of my 120GB drive using XSATA (if it will even work). So, for now, I'm going to enjoy the extra breathing room I have for Marketplace downloads (phew!) and just try to hope for the best.

-=Gamewatcher